KOHAT, July 20: The long-delayed Rs10 billion Clean Drinking Water for All (CDWA) programme has hit snags following a federal government decision to involve 6,035 union council nazims in the implementation process after its approval, officials told Dawn.

It is feared that the project, which passed through many stages of bureaucratic hassle since 2001, will be further delayed due to a tussle between councillors and union council nazims of their respective areas over selection of sites for filtration/water purification plants.

The government has already wasted much time and money on deciding to extend the facility to the whole population, revising PC-1s and renaming the project without realising that delay could cause a lot of hardship to people. The federal government has set a time of three years for completion of the project by the provinces.

An official said that according to the record of the planning section of the local government department, union council nazims had not identified a single site for filtration plants in the NWFP despite several reminders issued by district coordination officers.

It speaks volumes for the apathy of elected representatives and ineffectiveness of the local governance system.

The NWFP local government elections and rural development department in a latter to DCOs on June 10 had asked them to form district implementation committees and initiate the process of identifying sites for filtration plants in union councils.

The sites are to be identified by union council nazims with the consent of MPAs and MNAs within 15 days of formation of district implementation committees to avoid delay in implementation of the project for which the federal government had allocated Rs1198.62 million with a provincial government component of Rs543.232. The provincial government has also proposed an allocation of Rs278.982 in the 2006-07 Annual Development Programme.

The initiative for the project had been taken in 2004 in the light of studies conducted in 2001. It has now been declared a sub-programme of the Khushhal Pakistan Programme with an allocation of Rs10 billion for 6,035 union councils in the country, including 986 union councils in the NWFP.

Initially in 2004, the project was called Clean Drinking Water Initiative (CDWI) and its PC-1 was approved at a cost of Rs115.09 million to install 121 filtration plants throughout the country. The project was revised in 2005 with a new PC-1 at a cost of Rs495.5 million to establish 445 purification plants at the tehsil level.

In December 2005, the prime minister decided to extend the facility to union councils in view of reports by the National Institute of Health and the Korea International Corporation and warnings by the WHO and Unicef.

In March 2001, the quality of drinking water was monitored in 21 major cities, six rivers and 10 reservoirs.

A World Bank report said Pakistan along with Bhutan ranked second among 31 Asian countries in annual diarrhoeal cases in children. It said Pakistan spent Rs14 billion annually on treatment of patients suffering from water-borne ailments. The Unicef report said such patients occupied 40 per cent beds in hospitals in Pakistan, whereas 33 per cent deaths were caused by typhoid, cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery and hepatitis.